Breath
by BizarreSerenity
Summary: "And you wonder why I'm saving you for last, dear." Amorra, AmonXKorra, with some slight TahnoxKorra.


Fire shot dangerously close to her face, a streak of amber-red flames that nearly scorched her eyebrows.

Korra forced herself to lean slightly, breath burning in her chest as she willed herself not to breathe in case smoke still lingered, and launched into another barrage of punches and kicks aimed at the dummy placed across the gym.

Her movements were fast but too jerky, and she tried to slow down, to put more reach and grace into her blows. When the smoke cleared she gasped for air, and launched herself at the dummy, bringing her fists down in a blow aimed for the head.

Flame roared out of her clenched hands, engulfing the stone figure. She gasped, sweat running down her face, plastering her hair to her skin in swaths. The stone dummy glowed white hot from the fire and Korra darted back, light on her feet.

Like a dancer.

She balanced herself on the balls of her feet, bringing her arms up with her wrists crossed, breathing slowly and evenly in the meditative exercise that Tenzin had been pushing her to learn all month. Tension gripped her muscles, urging on on, but she breathed, watching the stone fade from white, to red, and back to a dull grey.

She dragged another breath in, balancing, the muscles in her arms screaming for release.

Korra slowly lowered them and began another set of blows, these ones slower, controlled, and graceful. As she lifted the palm of her left hand with another breath, a stream of almost crystal clear water flowed from a basin nearby, twining in arcs around her waiting hand.

She breathed, willing peace and concentration into her movements, closing her eyes and gathering warmth into her heart. She could feel the cool touch of the water on her hands, sculpted into whips that floated still, twined around her hands and arms.

Despite her calming breaths and thoughts, the explosion of the night before bloomed behind her closed eyelids, blossoming into fire, screams, and the rumbling of broken concrete and screeching of shattering glass. She struck, eyes flying open, sending a torrent of ice screaming for the dummy.

She pressed her hands over her mouth to muffle her yell of fury as the column of ice slammed into the stone dummy, knocking it on its side with a loud thud that made the paneled wood floor splinter and shake.

The ice was a huge, upright tower that was stuck fast onto the now fallen dummy.

Korra glared at it, her pulse crashing in her ears and wrists, anger flooding every single one of her senses.

She was so _furious_ at not being able to catch Amon after he attacked benders and non benders alike at the pro bending match, and then blew the arena up with no care for the people inside. It sickened her, kept her up at night, and was always in her thoughts.

It seemed there was nowhere that Amon couldn't violate with his attack against benders.

Not even Korra's own mind.

_Think calming thoughts. You can't hope to be better if all you do is throw tantrums like a little kid. Breathe, and fix what you broke._

She silently battled with herself, breathing fast and hard, eyed locked on the tower of ice. It sparkled merrily in the bright lights of the gym, turning the air around it chilly.

Korra rubbed her bare arms, and tried to focus on the sound of crickets chirping outside.

She then found that her concentration was absolutely shot and instead stalked over to the ice, formed a hot, licking flame in her palm, and pressed it onto the sparkling column.

She watched as the ice started to melt, the massive pillar reduced to water in a matter of seconds, leaving an almost _lake_ of water in its absence.

Korra couldn't bite back her angry shriek, and dug her hands into her hair at the last minute to stop the bonfire that wanted to rage out of her hands and destroy everything in it's wake.

She took a deep, shuddering breath, raised her arms, and breathed out slowly as the water rose from the floor, twining around her body in spirals as she bended it from the wooden floor, and back into the basin without spilling a drop.

"Even I have to admit you're getting good."

Korra spun around, ripping a water whip from the basin to snap at the dull, gloomy voice that echoed through the empty gym, but stopped cold when her eyes found the slumped figure in the doorway.

_Tahno._

Hurriedly, Korra forced the whip back into the basin and gazed at him with both shock and concern.

She'd seen him earlier that day where the Council gathered, and he had looked absolutely horrible. Her heart had nearly torn into two at the sight of him. There was no sparkle left in his eyes, no confidant stance. His expensive, flamboyant clothes were traded in for uniform black, his once beautiful mane on hair hanging lankly over his eyes, shielding them from prying gazes.

Tahno, the once Captain of the Wolfbats, was now a non-bender.

And Korra felt her heart breaking all over again at the sight of him in that doorway, looking even more crushed and defeated than he had that morning.

"What are you doing here so late?" She asked, more curious than concerned.  
She didn't understand why he would come back there, to the place that held his despair. Korra didn't get why he would want to be reminded of all that he had lost, and, although she had once held a serious dislike for the once jerk-like pretty boy, she found that dislike gone in the instant she had first seen him that day.

It was hard to hate someone who had lost everything.

"Couldn't sleep."

Korra winced at the sad, hopeless sound of his voice, and felt awkward standing by herself in the middle of the gym.

Instead, she made her way over to her former rival, and felt a strong urge to hug him, to do anything to make him lose that crushed, sad smile, those empty eyes.

She even found herself missing that stupid _hair_.

She wished she had taken him up on his "private lessons" and gotten to know the man he'd been before.

But now she couldn't.

And that felt horrible, devastating.

It was almost as if Tahno was lost forever.

"Oh."

She awkwardly stood before him, hugging herself, unable to stop looking at him.

There were dark circles under his eyes, and he had missed a button on his shirt.

She had never seen someone look so defeated before.

"Is there anything I can do, Tahno?" She asked, reaching forward timidly to touch his arm. "Anything at all to help you? I know we haven't been friendly or anything, but you look terrible…."

He laughed, then.

It was a miserable, horrible imitation of his once sexy, lust filled chuckle, and she winced.

Her eyes burned, and she was surprised to learn that she was close to tears.

He was like a shell of his former self.

"Thanks." He muttered, pushing his once luxurious bangs behind his ear, where they hung, lusterless. "I'm aware that I look less than myself, but If you want to do anything, than keep fighting. _**Get him for me.**_"

She nodded, and bit down hard on her tongue to force back the tears.

"I promised you I would." She insisted, curling her fingers tightly around his forearm as she spoke. "But you need to fight too, Tahno. You can't just give up on yourself because your bending is gone!"

Suddenly his lifeless eyes were full of fire, and he yanked his arm out fo her grasp, shoving her backwards with all his strength.

Korra managed to keep her balance, and gripped him hard by the shoulders with shaking hands.

"You don't know what it's like!" He hissed, glaring into her eyes as tears started to roll slowly down his cheeks. "A part of my soul is gone, Avatar! He took a part of my soul!"

He would have collapsed if Korra hadn't gathered him in her arms, and held onto him tightly.

Tahno's lean, muscled arms clamped tight around her as he sobbed, and Korra cried with him.

He was right.

She couldn't imagine losing that part of herself.

She had no idea how it would feel, but, judging from Tahno's current state, she had a very small, tiny idea on how _empty_ he felt.

"I'm going to make him pay." She whispered through her tears, smoothing his hair from his face as she rocked him slowly back and forth in her arms. "I'm going to make him pay, Tahno. But I need you to fight this. I need you to keep fighting!"

He shuddered with sobs, pressing them onto her skin and through to her very core, trembling in her bones and muscle and flesh where they would always stay.

"You don't know!" He keened mournfully, clinging to her like a child who had lost his mother. "And I hope you never will. I hope to the spirits that you will never have to know this _agony._"

She held him forever.

She held him until his eyes were dry, and until both of them were so exhausted that Korra could hardly walk him outside so he could make his own way home, relieved to see a spark of life, even if it was so tiny that she wasn't sure she had imagined it or actually seen it, in his eyes.

And although it was well passed midnight she returned to the gym.

The halls of the arena were dead silent, almost ghost like in their quietness. Korra's boots fell in time to her heartbeat as she made her way quietly back to the gym, hell bent on perfecting the water bending move that had broken the dummy.

She didn't, however, expect more company when she trudged back inside the large practice space.

Company that stopped her dead in her tracks.

She had been going through the water bending maneuver slowly, with no bending, just pacing herself through the wave like moves with her arms over and over again, breathing slow and deep. It was almost lulling, those moves, and she couldn't get how she had failed the first time until she caught a flicker of movement in the shadows in the back of the gym.

She turned a half circle, arms moving smoothly and easily, then froze.

"That was rather touching, Avatar. It's a shame you can't show the same sympathy for my cause."

Fire, fresh and angry, roared in her chest as Amon stepped out from the shadows, his hands clasped behind his back in an almost gentleman-type of manner.

She breathed in, hot air scalding her mouth as she did.

"You continue to surprise me. I thought that perhaps you would be a little glad. After all, I put those bullies in their place. If I remember correctly, the boy had beaten you unfairly, and even humiliated you publicly once." Amon continued, almost gliding forward with graceful footsteps. "Imagine my surprise when I find you embracing the boy who had caused you such defeat."

Fire choked her, and she clenched her fists as embers burned.

"Are you trying to say that I should be _happy_ you took his bending?"

Dead silence followed Korra's quiet, emotionless question, though, on the inside, she was anything but.

Amon watched her carefully, as she sized him up from top to bottom.

Korra knew he was strong. She knew that muscles and discipline, not to mention power, lay beyond that mask and those stifiling robes. She knew that if she tried to bend he would block her bending in a heart beat, with no effort at all.

He had more training, more years, more practice than her.

She waited.

"Happy? No, Avatar." He bantered almost casually, as if they were speaking of the weather and not of the violation that he continued to inflict. "I thought you would be a little grateful."

An inferno blazed in her heart, but she forced the embers in her hands and throat down, breathing, breathing, concentrating.

She took a step forward.

"Let me show you how grateful I am."

He laughed, then, a chilling, booming sound that might have made a grown man wet himself, but not Korra. She stared into his eyes, blue through the slits of his mask, and breathed.

Just breathed.

"You can't bend against me." He reminded her, his tone mocking.

Korra smiled.

"I don't need my bending to hurt you."

She darted forward in one surging, smooth movement, her arms snaking up to slam her fist under his jaw. Her knuckles burned as she struck her target cleanly, swinging gracefully aside to avoid his parrying blow, the tip of his fist barely grazing her belly as she edged out of his reach.

They stopped, just feet away from each other, eyes blazing.

Breathing.

Just breathing.

He held his arms out to her, as if inviting her into an embrace, and smiled beneath his mask.

"And you wonder why I'm saving you for last, dear."


End file.
